in giving his vote, or to deter him from going to the polls; the delegates elected under this act to assemble in Convention on the 1st Monday of December, 1856, to first determine by vote whether it is expedient to form a State Constitution and Government, and if it is decided to be expedient, to proceed form a Constitution and Government for the State of Kansas, with the boundaries defined in this act. The bill was never acted on in the House, but lay on the Speaker's table, untouched, when the session terminated by adjournment, Monday, Aug. 18th. July 8th.-In Senate, Mr. Douglas reported back from the Committee on Territories the House bill to admit Kansas as a State, with an amendment striking out all after the enacting clause, and inserting instead the Senate bill (No. 356) just referred to. Mr. Hale, of N. H., moved to amend this substitute by providing that all who migrate to the Territory prior to July 4th, 1857, shall be entitled to a vote in determining the character of the institutions of Kansas. Lost: Yeas, 13; Nays, 32. Mr. Trumbull, of Ill., moved that all the Territorial laws of Kansas be repealed and the Territorial officers dismissed. Rejected: Yeas, 12; Nays, 32. Mr. Collamer, of Vt., proposed an amendment, prohibiting Slavery in all that portion of the Louisiana purchase north of 36° 30′ not included in the Territory of Kansas. RejectedYeas, 12; Nays, 30-as follows: who may be restrained of his liberty by reason of said § 23 grants to every actual settler a right of preemption to the quarter-section of public land improved and occupied by him in said Territory of Kansas, prior to Jan. 1st, 1858. The two last and most important sections of Mr. Dunn's bill are verbatim as follows: § 24. And be it further enacted, That so much of the fourteenth section, and also so much of the thirty-second section, of the act passed at the first session of the thirtythird Congress, commonly known as the Kansas-Nebraska tion of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri act, as reads as follows, to wit: "Except the eighth secinto the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Con. gress with Slavery in the States and Territories as recog nized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to revive or put in force any law or regulation which may have existed prior to the act of 6th March, 1820, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting or abolishing slavery"-be and the said act of the 6th of March, 1820, is hereby revived and same is hereby repealed, and the said eighth section of declared to be in full force and effect within the said Territories of Kansas and Nebraska: Provided, howof said Territories shall not be discharged from such ever, That any person lawfully held to service in either service by reason of such repeal and revival of said eighth section, if such person shall be permanently reday of January, 1858: and any child or children born in either of said Territories, of any female lawfully held to service, if in like manner removed without said Territories before the expiration of that date, shall not be, by reason of anything in this act, emancipated from any service it might have owed had this act never been passed: And provided further, That any person law. fully held to service in any other State or Territory of the United States, and escaping into either the Territory of the person or place where such service is due, under any Kansas or Nebraska, may be reclaimed and removed to law of the United States which shall be in force upon the subject YEAS-Messrs. Bell of N. H., Collamer, Dodge, Fes-moved from such Territory or Territories prior to the 1st senden, Fish, Foot, Foster, Hale, Hamlin, Seward, Trum bull and Wade. The substitute reported by Mr. Douglas was then agreed to-Yeas, 32; Nays, 13—and the bill in this shape passed. [This amendment was not concurred in nor ever acted on by the House.] $25. And be it further enacted, That all other parts of the aforesaid Kansas-Nebraska act which relate to the said Territory of Kansas, and every other law or usage having, or which is pretended to have, any force or effect spirit of this act, except such laws of Congress and treaty in said Territory in conflict with the provisions or the stipulations as relate to the Indians, are hereby repealed and declared void. July 29th.-Mr. Dunn, of Ind., called up a bill "To reorganize the Territory of Kansas and for other purposes," which he had originally (July 7th) proposed as a substitute for the Senate bill (No 356) aforesaid. Its length, and the substantial identity of many of its provisions with those of other bills organizing Territories contained Committee of the Whole, of a bill introduced Mr. Dunn, having carried a reference to the in this volume, dissuade us from quoting it entire. by Mr. Grow, repealing all the acts of the alIt provides for a legislative election on the first Tuesday in November next; and sec-moved and carried a reconsideration of that leged Territorial Legislature of Kansas, now tion 15 proceeds: vote, and proceeded to the striking out of § 15. And be it further enacted, That all suits, pro- Mr. Grow's bill and the insertion of his own as cesses, and proceedings, civil and criminal, at law and in chancery, and all indictments and informations which a substitute. The motion prevailed. Whereshall be pending and undetermined in the courts of the upon Mr. Dunn moved the previous question on Territory of Kansas or of New-Mexico, when this act ordering this bill to be engrossed and read a shall take effect, shall remain in said courts where pend-third time, which prevailed-Yeas, 92; Nays, 86 ing, to be heard, tried, prosecuted, and determined in such courts as though this act had not been passed: Provided, nevertheless, That all criminal prosecutions now pending in any of the courts of the Territory of Kan sas imputing to any person or persons the crime of treason against the United States, and all criminal prosecutions, by information or indictment, against any person or persons for any alleged violation or disregard whatever of what are usually known as the laws of the Legislature of Kansas, shall be forthwith dismissed by the courts where such prosecutions may be pending, and every person -and then the bill passed-Yeas, 88; Nays, 74. This bill was not acted on by the Senate. The House, iu the course of its action on the several Annual Appropriation bills, affixed to several of them, respectively, provisos, abol ishing, repealing or suspending the various obnoxious acts of the Territorial Legislature; but all these were resisted by the Senate and were said, had been previously beaten, after prevail. ing in the House-the Senate striking them out and the House (by union of nearly all the supporters of Fillmore with nearly or quite all those supporting Buchanan) finally acquiescing. The 34th Congress reassembled on the 1st of December. Since the adjournment from the last session the presidential election had taker place, resulting in the election of James ultimately given up by the House, save one | adoption of the Free-State constitution as aforeappropriating $20,000 for the pay and expenses of the next Territorial Legislature, which the Senate gave up, on finding itself in serious disagreement with the House, and thus secured the passage of the Civil Appropriation bill. Finally, the two Houses were at odds, on a proviso forbidding the employment of the Army to enforce the acts of the Shawnee Mission assemblage, claiming to be a Territorial Legislature of Kansas, when at noon on the 18th of Au-Buchanan as President. The popular vote gave gust the speaker's hammer fell, anouncing the neither of the three candidates a majority. In termination of the session, leaving the Army the Free States the election was hotly contested bill unpassed. But President Pierce imme- and a very large vote polled. In the Southern diately issued a proclamation convening an extra States the vote was small, as no issue was presession on the 21st (Thursday), when the two sented to the people, it being claimed by Houses reconvened accordingly, and a full quo- their respective partisans, that both the candirum of each was found to be present. The dates (Buchanan and Fillmore) voted for in House promptly repassed the army bill, again that section were equally Pro-Slavery. But the affixing a proviso forbiding the use of the army pro-slavery leaders had declared in favor of to enforce the disputed Territorial laws, which Buchanan, and he consequently received large proviso the Senate as promptly struck out, and majorities in nearly every Slave State. the House as promptly reinserted. The Senate On the first day of the session, Kansas affairs insisted on its disagreement, but asked no con- came up in the House on an objection to admit ference, and the House (Aug. 22d) by a close J. W. Whitfield to a seat as a delegate, the obvote decided to adhere to its proviso: Yeas, 97;jection being that the border ruffian laws under Nays, 93; but one of the yeas (Bocock of Va.) which he had been elected were "null and was so given in order to be able to move a re-void." consideration; so that the true division was 96 to 94, which was the actual division on a motion by Mr. Cobb of Ga. that the House recede from its position. Finally, a motion to reconsider was made and laid on the table; Yeas, 97; Nays, 96; and the House thereupon adjourned. Mr. Grow spoke against admitting Whitfield, and quoted from a speech of Mr. Clayton (a short time before his decease) in the Senate. Mr. Clayton, in speaking of these laws, said: Now, sir, let me allude to that subject which is the great cause of all this discord between the two Houses. The unjust, iniquitous, oppressive and infamous laws Aug. 23d.-The Senate also voted to ad-enacted by the Kansas Legislature, as it is called, ought to be repealed before we adjourn.' here: Yeas, 35; Nays, 9. Mr. Clayton proposed a committee of Conference, to which Mr. Seward objected. tion. In the House, Mr. Campbell, of Ohio, a similiar Committee of Conference. to. What are these laws? One of them sends a man to hard labor for not less than two years for daring to discuss ac-in Kansas: not less than two years-it may be fifty; and the question whether Slavery exists, or does not exist, if a man could live as old as Methuselah, it might be No proposed over nine hundred years. That act prohibits all freedom Objected ferred to the exclusive decision of the people in that of discussion in Kansas on the great subject directly reTerritory; strikes down the liberty of the press too; and House re-is an act egregiously tyrannical as ever was attempted gland, and this Senate persists in declaring that we are by any of the Stuarts, Tudors or Plantagenets of En Mr. Cobb, of Ga., moved that the cede from its Kansas proviso. Defeated: Yeas, 97; Nays, 100. Adjourned. The struggle for the passage of the bill with or without the proviso continued until Saturday, August 30th, when, several members, hostile to the proviso, and hitherto absent, unpaired, having returned, the House again passed the Army bill with the proviso modified as follows: Provided, however, that no part of the military force of the United States, for the support of which appropriations are made by this act, shall be employed in aid of the enforcement of any enactments heretofore made by the body claiming to be the Territorial Legislature of Kansas. not to repeal that! Sir, let us tender to the House of Representatives the repeal of that and all other objectionable and infamous laws that were passed by that Legislature. I include in this denunciation, without any hesitation, those acts which prescribe that a man shall not even practice law in the Territory unless he swears to support the Fugitive Slave Law; that he shall not vote at any election, or be a member of the Legislature, unless he swears to support the Fugitive Slave Law; that he shall not hold any office of honor or trust there, unless he swears to support the Fugitive Slave Law; and you may as well impose just such a test oath for any other and every other law. . I will not go through the whole catalogue of the oppressive laws of this Territory. I have done that before today. There are others as bad as these to which I have The bill passed as reported (under the Prenow referred. I will not, on the other hand,* vious Question): Yeas, 99; Nays, 79; and was ever degrade myself by standing for an instant by those sent to the Senate, where the above proviso abominable and infamous laws which I denounced was stricken out: Yeas, 26; Nays, 7; and the of the United States shall wash its hands of all participahere this morning. What I desire now is, that the Senate bill thus returned to the House, when the Sen-tion in these iniquities by repealing those laws. ate's amendment was concurred in: Yeas, 101; Nays, 97. So the proviso was beaten at last, and the bill passed, with no restriction on the President's discretion in the use of the Army in Kansas; just as all attempts of the House to direct the President to have a nolle prosequi entered in the case of the Free-State prisoners in Kansas charged with aiding the formation and On Dec. 2nd, President Pierce sent his annual message to the two Houses of Congress. In re ferring to the late election, the President says: which, by their recent political action, the people of the It is impossible to misapprehend the great principles United States have sanctioned and announced. They have asserted the Constitutional equality of each. and all of the States of the Union as States; they have affirmed the constitutional equality of each and all of the citizens of the United States as citizens, whatever their religion, wherever their birth, or their residence; problems of social institutions political economy, and they have maintained the inviolability of the constitutional rights of the different sections of the Union; and they have proclaimed their devoted and unalterable attachment to the Union and the Constitution, as objects of interest superior to all subjects of local or sectional controversy, as the safeguard of the rights of all as the spirit and true essence of the liberty, peace, and greatness of the Republic. In doing this, they have, at the same time, emphatically condemned the idea of organizing in these United States mere geographical parties; of marshalling in hostile array towards each other the different parts of the country, North or South, East or West. Schemes of this nature, fraught with incalculable mischief, and which the considerate sense of the people has rejected, could have had countenance in no part of the country, had they not been disguised by suggestions plausible in appearance, acting upon an excited state of the public mind, induced by causes temporary in their character, and it is to be hoped transient in their influ ence. Perfect liberty of association for political objects and the widest scope of discussion are the received and ordinary conditions of government in our country. Our institutions, framed in the spirit of confidence in the intelligence and integrity of the people, do not forbid citizens, either individually or associated together, to attack by writing, speech, or any other methods short of physical force, the Constitution and the very existence of the Union. Under the shelter of this great liberty, and protected by the laws and usages of the government they assail, associations have been formed in some of the States, of individuals who, pretending to seek only to prevent the spread of the institution of Slavery into the present or future inchoate States of the Union, are really inflamed with desire to change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects, they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the Government organization which stands in their way, and of calumniating, with indiscriminating invective, not only the citizens of particular States, with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow-citizens throughout the country, who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, framed and adopted by our fathers, and claiming for the privileges it has secured, and the blessings it has conferred, the steady support and grateful reverence of their children. They seek an object which they well know to be a revolutionary one. They are perfectly aware that the change in the relative condition of the white and black races in the slaveholding States, which they would promote, is beyond their lawful authority; that to them it is a foreign object; that it cannot be effected by any peaceful instrumentality of theirs; that for them, and the States of which they are citizens, the only path to its accomplishment is through burning cities, and ravaged fields, and slaughtered populations, and all there is most terrible in foreign, complicated with civil and servile war; and that the first step in the attempt is the forcible disruption of a country embracing in its broad bosom a degree of liberty, and an amount of individual and public prosperity to which there is no parallel in history, and substituting in its place hostile governments, driven at once and inevitably into mutual devastation and fratricidal carnage, transforming the now peaceful and felicitous brotherhood into a vast permanent camp of armed men, like the rival monarchies of Europe and Asia. Well knowing that such, and such only, are the means and the consequences of their plans and purposes, they endeavor to prepare the people of the United States for civil war by doing everything in their power to deprive the Constitution and the laws of moral authority, and to undermine the fabric of the Union by appeals to passion and sectional prejudice, by indoctrinating its people with reciprocal hatred, and by educating them to stand face to face as enemies, rather than shoulder to shoulder as friends. It is by the agency of such unwarrantable interference, foreign and domestic, that the minds of many, otherwise good citizens, have been so inflamed into the passionate condemnation of the domestic institutions of the Southern States, as at length to pass insensibly to almost equally passionate hostility toward their fellow-citizens of those States, and thus, finally, to fall into the temporary fellowship with the avowed and active enemies of the Constitution. Ardently attached to liberty in the abstract, they do not stop to consider practically how the objects they would attain can be accomplished, nor to reflect that, even if the evil were as great as they deem it, they have no remedy to apply, and that it can be only aggravated by their violence and unconstitutional action. A question which is one of the most difficult of all the statesmanship, they treat with unreasonable intemperance of thought and language. Extremes beget extremes. Violent attack from the North finds its inevitable consequence in the growth of a spirit of angry defiance at the South. Thus, in the progress of events, we had reached the consummation which the voice of the people has now so pointedly rebuked, of the attempt of a portion of the States, by a sectional organization and movement, to usurp the control of the Government of the United States. I confidently believe that the great body of those who inconsiderately took this fatal step are sincerely attached to the Constitution and the Union. They would, upon deliberation, shrink with unaffected horror from any conscious act of disunion or civil war. But they have entered into a path which leads nowhere, unless it be to civil war and disunion, and which has no other possible outlet. They have proceeded thus far in that direction in consequence of the successive stages of their progress having consisted of a series of secondary issues, each of which professed to be confined within constitutional and peaceful limits, but which attempted indirectly what few men were willing to do directly; that is, to act aggressively against the constitutional rights of nearly one-half of the thirty-one States. In the long series of acts of indirect aggression, the first was the strenuous agitation, by citizens of the Northern States, in Congress and out of it, of the question of negro emancipation in the Southern States. In reference to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the legislative power of Congress over the Territories, the President says: The enactment which established the restrictive geo graphical line, was acquiesced in, rather than approved, by the States of the Union. It stood on the statute-book, however, for a number of years; and the people of the respective States acquiesced in the reenactment of the principle as applied to the State of Texas; and it was proposed to acquiesce in its further application to the But this proposition was successfully resisted by the reterritory acquired by the United States from Mexico. presentatives from the Northern States, who, regardless of the statute line, insisted upon applying restriction to the new territory generally, whether lying north or south of it, thereby repealing it as a legislative compromise, and, on the part of the North, persistently violating the compact, if compact there was. Thereupon, this enactment ceased to have binding virtue and so in effect it was treated on the occasion of the adin any sense, whether as respects the North or the South; mission of the State of California, and the organization of the Territories of New Mexico, Utah and Washington. Such was the state of this question when the time arrived for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. In the progress of constitutional inquiry and reflection, it had now at length come to be seen clearly that Congress does not possess constitutional power to impose restrictions of this character upon any present or future State of the Union. In a long series of decisions, on the fullest argument, and after the most deliberate consideration, the Supreme Court of the United States had finally determined this point in every form under which the question could arise, whether as affecting public or private rights-in questions of the public domain, of religion, of navigation, and of servitude. The several States of the Union are, by force of the Constitution, coequal in domestic legislative power. Congress cannot change a law of domestic relation in the State of Maine: no more can it in the State of Missouri. Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere nullity; it takes away no right, it confers none. If it remains on the statute-book unrepealed, it remains there only as a monument of error, and a beacon of warning to the legislator and the statesman. To repeal it will be only to remove imperfection from the statutes, without affecting, either in the sense of permission or of prohibition, the action of the States, or of their citizens. Still, when the nominal restriction of this nature, already a dead letter in law, was in terms repealed by the last Congress, in a clause of the act organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, that repeal was made the occasion of a wide spread and dangerous agitation. It was alleged that the original enactment being a compact of perpetual moral obligation, its repeal constituted an odious breach of faith. On the motion to print the Message and accompanying documents, Mr. Hale, of N. H., said: I look on the message of the President as a most un fortunate one. I have no desire to say anything which shall be construed into a want of courtesy, kindness, or respect for him. I mean all due courtesy, kindness and respect. His situation is certainly such as to appeal to the magnanimity rather than provoke the hostility of his opponents. If he had been content to submit to it, and go out, as it seemed to be the wish of his friends and foes that he should, without attempting to make such a charge as this against his political opponents, I should certainly have been content. But, sir, this message of the President is an arraignment of a vast majority of the people of eleven States of this Union of want of fidelity to their constitutional obligations, and of hostility to the Union and Constitution of these States. I deny it totally. More than that; the President of the United States, by virtue of the privileges conferred on him by the Constitution, charges upon the majority of the people of these States, in the exercise of their constitutional prerogative of voting for whom they please, the high offense of endeavoring to "usurp "-this is his very language-"the control of the Government of the United States." "Usurp," if lexicographers understand the meaning of the word, is "to seize by force without right." I have observed in the history of the past few months no attempt in any section of the country, last and least in that section which the President arraigns, to seize upon power in this Government except by the regular constitutional discharge of the people's obligations and duties as citizens going to the polls in the exercise of their elective franchise. Again, sir, I have not heard from a single citizen of those States an intimation, that if they should fail in the canvass upon which they had entered and in which they were striving to secure a majority in the councils of this Government, they were to do anything else but submit quietly and peaceably to the constitutionally expressed will of a majority. Mr. Seward, of N. Y., said: The President, I think, has departed from a customary course which was well established by his predecessors; that was to confine the annual message of the Executive to legitimate matters of legislation which must necessarily occupy the attention of Congress, and leave partisan disputes, occurring among the people, to the consideration and reflection of the people themselves. This President of the United States was the first one, I think, to depart from that course in his Inaugural Address; and, if I remember aright, he continued this departure in his first message and second message. He has been uncorrected, or rather unreformed in his erroneous course; he goes through to the end in the same course. I am willing, for my own part, that he, like all the rest of us, shall have his speech-shall assign his reasons and his vindication for his policy. I do not question his right; I do not dispute it. Whatever I have thought necessary to submit to any portion of my countrymen in regard to the canvass which is past, has been submitted in the right time, in the right place, and I trust, in the right spirit. I am willing to allow the President of the United States the same opportunity which you and I and all others have enjoyed. Mr. Mason, of Va., said: Mr. President: the constant and obstinate agitation of questions connected with the institution of Slavery, has brought, I am satisfied, the public mind in those States where the institution prevails, to the conviction that the preservation of that institution rests with themselves and with themselves only. Therefore, at this day, when it is the pleasure of Senators again to bring that institution under review upon this floor, in any connection whatever, as one of the Representatives of the South, I take no further interest in the discussion, or in the opinion which is entertained at the North in relation to it, than as it may confirm the hope that there is a public sentiment at the North yet remaining, which unites with the South in the desire to perpetuate the Union, and that, by the aid of that public sentiment at the North, the Union will be preserved. But further than that, as a statesman, and as one representing a Southern State, where that institution prevails m re largely than in any other, the public sentiment of the North is a matter indifferent to ine, because I say again, we have attained the conviction that the safety of that institution will rest, must rest, and should rest, with the people of the States only where it prevails. Mr. Wilson, of Mass., said: The party to which reference has been made in this message-for I take it this assault of the President of the United States is upon the Republican party, and the people who supported that organization in the last election-stands before the country with its opinions clearly expressed and openly avowed. It has a right to claim from the President of the United States--it has a right to claim from honorable Senators here-it has a right to claim before the country that it shall stand upon its broad and open declarations of principle. How does it stand? It accepts the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States as its fundamental creed of doctrine. It claims that Congress has a right to legislate for the Territories of the United States, and to exclude Slavery from them. It avows its determination to exercise that power. It has a right to ask of the President, and the country, that it shall be judged by its open and avowed declarations, and shall not be misrepresented, as it has been misrepresented in this document by the President of the United States. The declaration is broadly made here, not only that these men are sectionalists-not only that they have gotten up a sectional warfare, but that they are maintaining doctrines hostile to the perpetuity of the Union. Now, sir, let me say here to-day, that I do not know a man in the Free States who supported John C. Fremont in the last presidential election, not one of the one million three hundred thousand intelligent freemen who supported that nomination, that ever avowed his intention to go for a dissolution of this Union; but at all times, on all occasions, in public and in private, they have avowed their devotion to the Union, and their intention to maintain and defend it. Let me say further, that the men in this country, who avow themselves to be disunionists, that squad, which, during the last thirty years, on all fit and unfit occasions, in moments of excitement and moments of calm, have avowed themselves disunionists, have, as a body, en masse, supported the Democratic party. The whole southern heavens have been darkened during the last four months by the black banners of disunion that have floated in the breeze. Mr. Pugh, of Ohio, defended the President against the construction put on certain parts of the message by other Senators. He said: My colleague (Mr. Wade) asserts that the President has employed libellous terms in speaking of a large number of our common constituents, who voted for Col. Fremont at the last election. If the charges were true in any sense, I should unite with my colleague in the condemnation which he has pronounced; for although I would have deplored the election of Col. Fremont as the greatest calamity that could befall the American people, I feel bound to render my tribute of respect to those honest, patriotic, but as I think, misguided, citizens of Ohio, who voted for him. The paragraph upon which my colleague based this accusation, is the one which I now send to the secretary's desk. (Here the secretary read the part of the message quoted above, beginning, "Our institutions framed" and down to "rather than shoulder to shoulder as friends.") It is (continued Mr. Pugh) impossible that this paragraph should apply to the members of the Republican party, if, as now asserted, they do not aim at the abolition by Congress of Slavery within the States. It is directed against those who hold that doctrine. It refers to the men whom the Senator from Mass. (Mr. Wilson) and the Senator from Maine (Mr. Fessenden) themselves have denounced on the floor. THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. On the 8th December, 1857, President Buchanan transmitted to Congress his first annual message. He devotes considerable space to the subject of Slavery, giving a history of the formation of the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, and announcing the doctrine that the Constitution of its own force carries Slavery into all the Territories. Speaking of this subject, he says: "In emerging from the condition of Territorial dependence into that of a sovereign State, it was their duty, in my opinion, to make known their will by the votes of the majority, on the direct question, whether this important domestic institution should or should not continue to exist" and that the slaves now in Kansas 66 were brought into the Territory under the Constitution of the United States.' The following is the part of the message referring to Kansas affairs: It is unnecessary to state in detail the alarming condition of the Territory of Kansas at the time of my inauguration. The opposing parties then stood in hostile array against each other, and any accident might have relighted the flames of civil war. Besides, at this e itical moment, Kansas was left without a governor by the resignation of Governor Geary. On the 19th of February previous, the Territorial legislature had passed a law providing for the election of delegates on the third Monday of June, to a convention to meet on the first Monday in September, for the purpose of framing a constitution preparatory to admission into the Union. This law was in the main fair and just; and it is to be regretted that all the qualified electors had not registered themselves and voted under its provisions. At the time of the election for delegates, an extensive organization existed in the Territory, whose avowed object it was, if need be, to put down the lawful government by force, and to establish a government of their own under the so-called Topeka Constitution. The persons attached to this revolutionary organization abstained from taking any part in the election. to a direct vote. How wise, then, was it for Congress to pass over all subordinate and intermediate agencies, and proceed directly to the source of all legitimate power under our institutions! How vain would any other principle prove in praetice! This may be illustrated by the case of Kansas. Should she be admitted into the Union with a constitution either maintaining or abolishing Slavery, against the sentiment of the people, this could have no other effect than to continue and to exasperate the existing agitation during the brief period required to make the constitution conform to the irresistible will of the majority. The friends and supporters of the Nebraska and Kansas act, when struggling on a recent occasion to sustain its wise provisions before the great tribunal of the American people, never differed about its true meaning on this subject. Everywhere throughout the Union they publicly pledged their faith and their honor that they would chee fully submit the question of Slavery to the decision of the bona fide people of Kansas, without any restriction or qualification whatever. All were cordially united up great doctrine of popular sovereignty, which is the vrval principle of our free institutions. Had it, then, been insinuated from any quarter that it would be a sufficient compliance with the requisitions of the organic law for the members of a convention, thereafter to be elected, to withhold the question of lavery from the people, and to substitute their own will for that of a legally-ascertained majority of all their constituents, this would have been instantly rejected. Everywhere they remained true to the resolution adopted on a celebrated occasion recognizing "the right of the people of all the Territories-including Kansas and Nebraska, acting through the legally and fairly expressed will of a majortheir inhabitants justified it-to form a constitution with or without Slavery, and be admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States." The Convention to frame a constitution for Kansas met on the first Monday of September last. They were called together by virtue of an act of the Territorial legislature, whose lawful existence had been recognized by Congress in different forms and by different enactments. A large proportion of the citizens of Kansas did not think proper to register their names and to vote at the election for delegates; but an opportunity to do this having been fairly afforded, their refusal to avail themselves of their right could in no manner affect the legality of the convention. The act of the Territorial legislature had omitted to provide for submitting to the people the constitution which might be framed by the Convention; and in the excited state of public feeling throughout Kansas, an apprehension extensively prevailed that a design existed to force upon them a constitution, in relation to Slavery, against their will. In this emergency it became my duty, as it was my unquestionable right, having in view the union of all good citizens in support of the Territorial laws, to express an opinion on the true construction of the provisions concerning Slavery contained in the organic act of Congress of the 30th May, 1854. Con-ity of actual residents, and whenever the number of gress declared it to be "the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." Under it Kansas, "when admited as a State," was to "be received into the Union with or without Slavery as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." Did Congress mean by this language that the delegates elected to frame a constitution, should have authority finally to decide the question of Slavery, or did they intend, by leaving it to the people, that the people of Kansas themselves should decide this question by a direct vote? On this subject I confess I had never entertained a serious doubt, and, therefore, in my instructions to Governor Walker of the 28th March last, I merely said that when "a constitution shall be submitted to the people of the Territory, they must be protected in the exercise of their right of voting for or against that instrument, and the fair expression of the popular will must not be interrupted by fraud or violence." This Convention proceeded to frame a constitution for Kansas, and finally adjourned on the 7th day of November. But little difficulty occurred in the Convention, except on the subject of Slavery. The truth is, that the general provisions of our recent State constitutions are so similar, and, I may add, so excellent, that the difference between them is not essential. Under the earlier practice of the Government no constitution framed by In expressing this opinion it was far from my inten- the convention of a Territory preparatory to its admistion to interfere with the decision of the people of Kan- sion into the Union as a State had been submitted to the sas, either for or against Slavery. From this I have people I trust, however, the example set by the last always carefully abstained. Intrusted with the duty Congress, requiring that the constitution of Minnesota of" taking care that the laws be faithfully executed," "should be subject to the approval and ratification of my only desire was that the people of Kansas should the people of the proposed State," may be followed on furnish to Congress the evidence required by the organic future occasions. I took it for granted that the Convenact, whether for or against Slavery; and in this man- tion of Kansas would act in accordance with this examner smooth their passage into the Union. In emerging ple, founded as it is, on correct principles; and hence from the condition of Territorial dependence into that of my instructions to Governor Walker, in favor of suba sovereign State, it was their duty, in my opinion, tomitting the constitution to the people, were expressed in make known their will by the votes of the majority, on general and unqualified terms. the direct question, whether this important domestic institution should or should not continue to exist. Indeed this was the only possible mode in which their will could be authentically ascertained. In the Kansas-Nebraska act, however, this requirement, as applicable to the whole constitution. had not been inserted, and the Convention were not bound by its terms to submit any other portion of the instrument to an election, except that which relates to the "domestic institution" of Slavery. This will be rendered clear by a simple reference to its language. It was "not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institu tions in their own way." According to the plain construction of the sentence, the words "domestic institutions" have a direct as they have an appropriate reference to Slavery. "Domestic institutions" are limited to the family. The relation between master and slave and a few others are "domestic institutions," and are enBesides, there was no question then before Congress, nor indeed has there since been any serious question before the people of Kansas or the country, except that whi relates to the "domestic institution "of Slavery. The election of delegates to a convention must necessarily take place in separate districts. From this cause it may readily happen, as has often been the case, that a majority of the people of a State or Territory are on one side of a question, whilst a majority of the representatives from the several districts into which it is divided may be upon the other side. This arises from the fact that in some districts delegates may be elected by small majorities, whilst in others those of different sentiments may receive majorities sufficiently great not only to overcome the votes given for the former, but to leave a large majority of the whole people in direct opposition to a majority of the delegates. Besides, our his-tirely distinct from institutions of a political character. tory proves that influences may be brought to bear on the representative sufficiently powerful to induce him to disregard the will of his constituents. The truth is, that no other authentic and satisfactory mode exists of ascertaining the will of a majority of the people of any State or Territory on an important and exciting question like that of Slavery in Kansas, except by leaving it The Convention, after an angry and excited deb finally determined, by a majority of only two, to sy the question of Slavery to the people, though at th |